


love it all again

by uponmountains



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Family, Gen, Multi, Post-Canon, romantic relationships are mostly background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25320850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uponmountains/pseuds/uponmountains
Summary: At the end of the ordeal, Andy reflects on the enduring love that she has for her family.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 16
Kudos: 246





	love it all again

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a short Joe/Nicky story, but it turned into a bit of a love letter from Andy to her family.
> 
> I've fallen so in love with The Old Guard. I watched it for the second time today and felt compelled to write this (and got interrupted by a tornado, of all things, so I hope it doesn't seem rushed). I hope you enjoy!

Habit is a hard thing to shake.

After they walked away from the pub, leaving Booker behind, they all still subconsciously slipped back into the general formation of how they were accustomed to moving as a group. Nile was a welcome addition, still so young and bright, not yet crushed by the weight of centuries bearing down on her back. She stood where Booker once did, before he tore out pieces of their hearts in a desperate attempt to make sense of his own, but she did not fill his place. Something was skewed to the left, missing and wrong. 

They had separated before. Andy’s recent year long sabbatical was evidence of that. But they had never before parted on a betrayal. They had always had an implicit trust that they had a home to return to, as long as they could find each other again. And somehow, for them, whether it was the pull of fate or the will of a god, it was never too hard to find each other even when they weren’t trying. Perhaps it was like Nicky said; they were destined to be together.

Whatever force had caused them to be the way they were, it hadn’t forced them to become a family. They did that all on their own. 

Andy had survived centuries alone to find her person in Quynh, the true match for her soul. Raining righteous justice down on those who wronged the innocent and ending their days side by side with the dancing light of a fire caressing their unchanging faces, they were an unstoppable force together. Until they weren’t. 

Andy had thought she’d known pain and unbearable loneliness before, but it was nothing compared to the agony of having known love and lost it. 

Still, with no choice but to carry on, she learned about different kinds of undying love as she gained a family, with brothers and confidants and, finally, something like a daughter when they found Nile. Quynh was a constant ache in Andy’s heart, but she knew how to live without her, hard as it was. Betrayal, however, was new, and it was sharp and vicious, but it would also eventually be forgiven, even by those who were outwardly the angriest, because a part of them all understood Booker’s reasons. He was the only one among them to watch his children die in pain, to be unable to answer their desperate pleas for help, to be hated by them. Even surrounded by his new family, he was often the most alone of them all.

Andy had had to mourn Quynh and Lykon. The family she’d been born with were lost memories, sacrificed to the millennia behind her. Joe and Nicky had had families once, too, but with each other to lean on from the very beginning, they had managed to grieve and honor their dead and keep on living, but they were no strangers to loss and its lingering anguish. Nicky forgave easily, and he would pull Joe along to his side eventually, as he always could. Nile, young as she was, had known pain as well, but her empathy to Booker’s plight extended beyond the average, and she didn’t want him to be forced to spend a century alone with himself. She couldn’t imagine any of them coming out better on the other side for having been apart.

Andy ruminated on Nile’s kindness as they walked away from Booker, hoping that she would manage to hold on to it in the time she had ahead. Andy would be there for such a small length of it, after all. Now mortal, she knew that she would one day join their scattered collection of fond but fading memories. Maybe Joe would draw her from time to time, bringing her sharp jaw and bright eyes alight in the worn, beloved pages of his sketchbook. Maybe Nicky would sneak another picture or two as she got old—if she managed to get old—like he had in the past, keeping the few polaroids private and safe like his greatest treasure. And Nile… She had only known Nile for a few days now, but she knew that the girl would cling to her memory just as resolutely as that of her family. She was not the type to give up easily.

Andy smiled a bit sadly, wondering how Booker would fare. With Joe and Nicky as intrinsically entwined as they were, Andy had often gravitated to Booker when they were all together. No one was ever excluded, but the pairs were natural. The last week had shifted that so completely. Everything had changed irrevocably, and they would all have to learn to adapt to the new normal.

When you live the life of an immortal and have to keep your very existence a secret, patterns become something dangerous. Deadly, if you’re not careful. The group has to avoid visiting the same places for too long, or getting attached to mortals who will question their perpetual youth. They can’t keep safehouses for long enough to register as more than a blip on the timelines of their lives. They cannot trust the same contacts for more than a few years. They are forced to always change. This change, though, was something for which they were not prepared, and it would take a great deal of adjustment.

For Joe and Nicky, habit has never been a bad thing. It’s slipping into a warm embrace at the end of the day, and waking ensconced in the surety of love. It’s bringing home gifts for each of the members of their little family, offering gentle and unnecessary reminders that they all are and will always be welcome and loved.

For Nile, pulling herself back from her family and choosing instead to let them mourn her and live on was the hardest, bravest thing she had ever had to do. Saying goodbye to her family without actually being able to say goodbye ripped Nile apart inside. Her mother and brother had been the constants in her life, the only people who were always present after they had lost her father. Her entire life had been turned on its head, but she would adapt.

As for Andy, everything is different, and yet it’s still the same. She will continue to do good, to help as many people as she possibly can before she dies. She’ll eat and talk and sit with her loved ones, just as she always has. She’ll mourn those she has lost and love those who remain just as fiercely as she is able for as long as she can. It’s all that any of them can do.

“Andy,” Nicky said, sounding just slightly insistent, like it wasn’t his first time trying to get her attention. With a word, she was drawn from her reflection, and the hazy, dancing memories of her family scattered throughout history settled into place as they stood before her, looking at her with concern. She glanced down and found that her wound must have torn open while they were walking, blood spotting through the fresh bandage that Joe had insisted on putting on her earlier and dampening her clean shirt.

“I’m good, guys,” she said placatingly. The relative numbness offered by her retrospection had faded, but the pain wasn’t unbearable. She’d survived so much worse in the past. A single bullet wouldn’t be what killed her.

“Still, we should really get you properly patched up,” Joe said. They were blocking the sidewalk now, and Nicky put a gentle hand on Joe’s arm to tug him out of the way of a couple going past. 

“Have any of you ever even owned a first aid kit?” Nile asked with an eyebrow raised skeptically. Their capacity to shrug off bullets in the past had led to them ignoring anything more than the most basic first aid. When no one answered, she shook her head with a still slightly bewildered laugh, the last few days still taking their time to settle in her mind. “Right. I’ll grab some stuff and meet you back at…?”

Nicky rattled off the address of a nearby safehouse, and she nodded and split off from them with a wave over her shoulder. The others watched her go for a moment and then turned, Joe and Nicky shifting to accommodate the change in numbers and account for Andy’s newfound vulnerability. They flanked her closely, keeping watch around them as they went. Andy could barely keep herself from rolling her eyes, but she understood their concern. They had dealt with Merrick and his men, but they still felt exposed. Their secret had made it out into the world, and in this new age of technology, it could easily happen again if they weren’t more careful than ever before. So while she didn’t like being coddled, Andy could grudgingly accept being protected. If it had been one of them, she knew that she’d be doing the same.

They eventually arrived at the safehouse, and Joe went ahead to make sure that it was clear while Nicky stayed back to triple check that they hadn’t been followed. When both met back in the middle with a nod, they went inside.

Andy found herself being gently manhandled onto a worn couch, and she leaned against its back, dropping her head and closing her eyes. She let out a long breath. It had been a long day.

She opened them again when she felt a mug being pressed into her hand. Her shirt was tugged up a few inches on the other side, and then her wound was being cleaned by the gentle, deft hands of an artist, wiping away what blood had spilled with a warm, wet cloth. Andy had never needed to be cared for after a battle in her thousands of years of life, but the comfort and support inherent in the actions were just another expression of the loyalty she had won from these men, and so she found the motions soothing rather than annoying.

“I can take care of myself, you two. I’m not about to break just because I’m mortal now,” she offered up the token protest anyway, and, as she expected, she was promptly ignored and decided to settle into the couch instead, bringing the mug to her lips and letting her eyes close again.

After a few minutes, the pressure left, and then music began to play quietly from across the large main room. It was something that Andy vaguely recognized, something Italian, from maybe half a century earlier. She looked toward the noise, seeing Joe and Nicky wrapped up in each other’s arms, heads bowed and murmuring quietly together. Joe’s fingers were carding through Nicky’s hair, seemingly fixated on soothing one spot more than the rest, and Andy could hear soft reassurances of “Yusuf, I’m alright, I’m with you. Forever,” in Arabic before she turned her attention away to the darkening sky outside the window. They knew she was with them, but the moment was still private. They would never exclude her, so she could at least offer them their privacy. She knew well enough that her situation was making them doubt their own and, more importantly, each other’s longevity.

Andy sighed and considered her mortality to the background of the smooth notes of the music. Everything suddenly had a time limit, and while she was mostly content with what she had done, she didn’t ever want to abandon her people. Someday, they would succeed in finding Quynh. Someday, they would reunite with Booker, likely long before the agreed upon date, because no matter how hot the anger burned now, it would fade and they would want to be a united family again. Someday, they would all come back together and be as they should. 

For now, though, Andy watched Joe and Nicky sway to the music, sat with Nile when she returned and insisted on seeing to the wound properly, and joined the others around a small table when dinner was eventually served by the two men. They managed to smile and laugh together, the empty seat automatically prepared for Booker serving as a glaring reminder that they were incomplete but also a promise that it would one day be filled again. 

Nile laughed at a comment that Joe made, while Nicky watched the man with pure adoration plain in his gaze, and it brought a smile to Andy’s lips as she watched them. 

She had started all of this alone, but she would finish it as part of a family. She’d lived for millennia, she had loved and she had lost, and if it was her time, then she would have few complaints, but thankfully, they’d all survived Merrick. They would be reunited. What was broken would be repaired. 

It was not yet her time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading 💕 I truly hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
